Q&A: Growing young minds

2018 State of the Industry Report - Education

Dottie Lankard with one of her classes in Bluestreak Greenhouse in spring 2018

Photo courtesy of Bluestreak Greenhouse’s Facebook page

Some growers have trouble finding young people to work for them. However, these educators are doing what they can to garner an interest and horticulture in children and young adults, while teaching them skills that would translate to the industry and other job markets.

Troy Badeaux is the ag science teacher and FFA adviser at East Ridge High School in Clermont, Florida. For the third year, he is teaching classes and advising activities that are focused on the production of ornamentals in a 30-by-50-foot greenhouse and a 30-by-50-foot shade house, produce in a 25,000-square-foot outdoor garden area and shrubs in a 6,000-square-foot outdoor area. Below, Badeaux answers some questions about how he teaches and motivates his students.

Greenhouse Management: Are your classes electives?

Troy Badeaux: It is an elective, but in some cases, it also counts as a science credit ... You get kids that get in there, and they don’t like it. You get kids in there that do like it. What we have in our school — and now it’s our whole district — is something called flex time scheduling. [It’s] basically a 45-minute period where the kids ... go where they need to go. I get anywhere from 20 to 60 kids who say, ‘Let me do this,’ and some of them are my students, and some of them aren’t. But what I’m finding is some of the ones that aren’t my students — they like what they do, they like the course and they end up taking my class the following year.

GM: Could you describe the work that they’re doing with the plants? Are they sticking cuttings and transplanting?

TB: I explain to them the definition of work protocol, if you will, and how different plants have different protocols — there are different things you’re going to do to propagate different plants. Sometimes different plants have the same protocol. You’ll do the same for a pentas that you will for a coleus. Then the Mexican Heather is like a little bit different, but you’ll do the same protocol for the Mexican Heather that you would the Mexican oregano. Sometimes with a Sansevieria or mother-in-law’s tongue, there’s a certain protocol for that. Some plants need a little woodier cutting than others. Let them stick a variety of that and see how that takes or doesn’t take.

When Hurricane Irma struck in 2017, it damaged elements of East Ridge High School’s greenhouse. Badeaux is accepting assistance from interested parties in the industry. For more information on how you can help, contact him at badeauxt@lake.k12.fl.us

GM: Have you had students go on and pursue this as a major, or find anything right out of high school, that would fit within the horticulture/agriculture/landscaping career path?

TB: I had a couple kids last year who were trying to go that way as a career path, so I at least tried to give them the experience. I’ve got one kid right now that’s got a part-time job in that specific area, so he’s able to take what he learns in class and bring it to the job site, and vice versa. Stuff that he does on the job site, he’s able to bring to the classroom ... I can say, ‘Look, this is what we’re doing.’ And then he helps pick up the pace. ... I just let the kids know, and I tell them, ‘What we’re trying to do is build a culture — build something that will always be a part of you, that you’ll always carry. You’ll always be a part of it, and it will always be a part of you.’ And those kids, man, once they started developing a little more self-motivation — not just the fact that they’re learning horticultural skills. They’re learning soft skills. They’re learning to take the initiative.

Plants growing in the 30-by-50-foot greenhouse at East Ridge High School

Photo courtesy of Troy Badeaux

After 19 years in her role, Dottie Lankard, supervisor at Bluestreak Greenhouse at Neodesha Middle-High School in Neodesha, Kansas, has expanded her program to include four classes for 7th through 12th-graders. These include a greenhouse class that grows poinsettias, hanging baskets and other crops in a 30-by-60-foot greenhouse; an interiorscapes class that is focused on patio plants; a shop class that includes woodworking tasks; and an administrative class that selects plants, creates a master planting schedule and pays all the bills. Below, Lankard answers some questions about how she has made her program a success.

Greenhouse Management: Is the greenhouse class during both the spring and the fall semesters?

Dottie Lankard: Mostly, we just call it shop class in the fall because the classes look different in the fall semester than they do in the spring semester. ... I say it’s greenhouse students in the spring. And one of the things I do with those kids — once they get done planting seeds, plugs, cuttings, whatever we’re doing ... I teach the kids how to count change and how to run the cash register, and then start giving them those soft skills — how to wait on a customer, how to say, ‘hello,’ how to greet a customer. We spend probably anywhere from four to six weeks of that springtime when we’re done planting, when we’re waiting for everything to grow — that’s when they start learning how to run the registers so that when we’re open, [they’re ready]. The open days are really exciting. I’ve had as many as 60 to 75 people come into that little 30-by-60 greenhouse on opening day.

GM: Do you sell everything that is grown in the greenhouse?

DL: We sure do. I take the interior plants [that sit the entire school year in the commons area] home and baby them over the summertime. ... Everything in the greenhouse sells because I don’t want to have to water it over the summertime. We start fresh every year. Another thing we do is, when we’re done selling — and we only have like a two-week span where we sell to the public — we sit down and take a look at what sold well, what went first, what did we have to sell at half price. Since we went retail [10 years ago], we have been budget-free. We’re self-sustaining. The district doesn’t give me money to run this program.

GM: Is there anything else you’d like to add about this experience?

DL: It’s been great. I get some kids who have no idea they even like plants. They just thought it would be easier than the other alternative they had for class choices. Some students — not all — but sometimes I will get a student come through my program for six years. That’s where I see the most improvement. And that’s awesome. Not many teachers get to watch a student grow and change and mature like that.

Leora Radetsky’s background is in lighting research with a non-horticulture (or even horticulture-adjacent) focus; she has been at the Lighting Research Center (LRC) (lrc.rpi.edu) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for more than a decade. Dr. Jaimin Patel, meanwhile, is a plant pathologist by trade, having received a degree from North Dakota State University in plant pathology; he started at LRC two years ago. At first glance, Radetsky and Patel would not seem to be two people who would embark on a long-term research project together.

But that is just what they are doing. When Patel joined LRC to bolster the center’s horticultural research capabilities, the goal was for him to embark on projects not being done at other universities or other research centers. And for that last two years, that’s what he and Radetsky have been doing. As a pair, they are exploring how light affects the health of the plants, including physiology.

“We really found that few are working on this area, so there’s a lot of opportunity, and we really think that our mix of physicists, vision scientists, engineers and researchers can really be creative, and test and potentially find solutions,” Patel says.

Research goals

The aim of the research is simple: to see if light can be used as an alternative or adjunct to chemical treatments used to treat pest and disease issues.

“There is some really good research in the literature but in some cases it’s hard for growers to know how to implement it,” Patel says. “We are looking into specialty crops, and considering economics for growers, as a real tactical approach to apply treatment. We want it to be effective to control plant pests and not do damage.”

In the past two years, Radetsky and Patel have only worked on a small number of crops — specifically specialty crops such as cucumbers, herbs and squash. In cucumber and squash, Radetsky and Patel’s research has shown that the ultraviolet light at the right intensity can be effective in treating powdery mildew. But they have also found that light that is too intense can do damage.

Leora Radetsky

Photo courtesy of the Lighting Research Center

“If you overdose the plant, you kill the plants or you damage them. It kills productivity and you don’t get the yields that you want,” Patel says. “If you under dose, or if you don’t give the right spectrum of UV, then it’s not effective either.”

Patel says the key to what they’ve learned so far is understanding how light affects the plant and the pathogen. For example, DNA in the powdery mildew-causing pathogens is damaged by certain UV doses. During the day, both UV and visible light are present in sunlight and the pathogen DNA can repair itself. Applying UV at night prevents the repair mechanisms and allows the optimum dose to be determined.

“In the case of powdery mildew we’re affecting the DNA, whereas [with] other crops that we’re looking at, we are not sure of the mechanisms. We’re finding that visible light has an effect,” Patel says. “In these cases, one outcome measure that we’re looking at is reducing the spores. But we’re just getting started, and there’s a lot more to look at. But what we think is important is that you have a dose response curve, essentially — so how much you need to give, what spectrum, at what time and for how long — and we are looking at the economics of that.”

How the Lighting Research Center works

The LRC, according to Radetsky, works differently than some other research programs. Instead of a land-grant university allotting money each year to different research projects, researchers at the LRC must, for the most part, secure their own funding and set up their own experiments in different facilities. This is in part because of the wide range of topics — many of which are consumer-facing and/or not related to horticulture — the LRC explores.

“As long as I’ve been here at the Lighting Research Center, that has been our model,” Radetsky says. “We primarily operate on this sort of soft-money grant writing. In many ways we are like a business where we have to be efficient and productive in all phases. This keeps us working on real problems and societal benefits.” She adds that the pair also receives financial support from some forward-looking lighting companies such as OSRAM and Cree who have a vested interest in the research yielding positive results about light’s impact on plant health.

To date, Leora Radetsky and Dr. Jaimin Patel's research has focused on different vegetable crops, including cucumbers, herbs and squash.

Photo courtesy of the Lighting Research Center

According to Radetsky and Patel, they have received a fair amount of help that has helped their research remain ongoing in the past few years. They have access to some greenhouses near their Troy, New York lab for their research and have an indoor growing space at a nearby RPI location. They add that David Gadoury, a senior research associate at the Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, has been an invaluable resource as their partner in this research.

“It’s really thanks to him that we embarked on this research,” Radetsky says. “And he’s been working in this area for a long time. Thanks to him, we really got started in this and really started to understand the opportunities.”

They’ve also partnered with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research and the University of Florida on the research.

“We also get to understand the problem, and not just at the regional level but also at the national and international level,” Patel says. “We’re hearing from different stakeholders to really understand what is going on in agriculture.”

The goal of Radetsky and Patel's research is to prove that supplemental lighting is a feasible way to improve plant health.

Photo courtesy of the Lighting Research Center

The next steps

Radetsky and Patel both say that their next step is to begin raising awareness for their work and, ideally, to garner more funding for it. When that happens, their plan is to expand their work beyond the produce crops they are currently working with and expand to other specialty crops and ornamentals. They have not yet determined what the first group of ornamentals would be, as it may depend on requirements tied to the funding.

Sometimes they focus their research on one specific pest or disease issue, perhaps even in one specific to a region of the country. For example, a New York State Farm Viability grant was awarded to them to use UV to treat powdery mildew and downy mildew in summer squash.

“We want to make these solutions practical for growers,” Patel says.

“Our team has been funded to look at the impact of light on some economically important specialty crops,” Radetsky says. “Hopefully, as we show results and as we’re able to do more work in this area, we’ll be able to look at other problems in the food chain that we’re very interested in.”

2018 Greenhouse Lighting Guide - Propagation

HPS and LED lights affect plants differently in propagation, but both are options for growers considering adding lighting.

Photo: Adode Stock

At Cultivate’18, Dr. Stephanie Burnett was part of a panel offering growers tips on how to best optimize propagation and how lighting can play a role in that effort. Burnett, an assistant professor of horticulture at the University of Maine, spoke on the panel with Dr. Marc W. van Iersel, a professor specializing in crop physiology and nutrition at the University of Georgia’s Department of Horticulture.

Below, in a follow-up interview with Greenhouse Management, Burnett discusses her presentation, what lighting levels are best for different periods of propagation and more.

Greenhouse Management: What are some of the broad factors contributing to propagation success?

Stephanie Burnett: Lighting can be a big factor, and I think for a lot of herbaceous plants that people work with, the general trend is that people have found that if you have a high daily light integral (DLI), you generally have better rooting. And that’s true both for cuttings and stock plants. You want to have a high DLI when you’re growing your stock plants and you want to have a higher DLI when you’re rooting the cuttings. There are other factors as well that can be important. Substrate moisture is something that some growers don’t really manage very well. If you have too high of a substrate moisture, it can actually reduce your rooting [success], and if it’s too low it can be detrimental as well. It can be challenging to find that nice medium point for a lot of folks. It can also be challenging to manage temperature.

GM: What are some best practices growers can implement in propagation, and how does lighting impact them?

SB: Keeping a clean environment can be very helpful. And just trying to find the right balance between all of the different factors that are there when the roots take hold, they’re starting to grow and everything is kind of moving along. Also, are there signs that a grower could see that that lighting is making some kind of difference, other than physical characteristics? Are there other characteristics that stand out in terms of, ‘Okay, this is something that actually is making a difference?’ I think it’s tricky to tell, too. Growers could always do some side-by-side tests on their own, and not in their greenhouse, to get a better idea of if supplemental lighting is making a difference.

Dr. Burnett recommends that growers conduct extra testing and trialing to determine if lighting is impacting their propagation in a meaningful, beneficial way.

Photo: Adode Stock

GM: Are there specific lighting levels growers should be trying to stay within when trying to achieve successful propagation?

SB: At [van Iersel’s and my] talk, we recommended different levels, kind of depending on the stage that the cutting is in. Very early on, it doesn’t really need as much light and it needs to [be] in the range of three to eight moles per meter square per day. Then, when the roots are starting to form and differentiate and starting to photosynthesize a little bit more, it needs in the neighborhood of five to 10 moles per meter square per day. Once the roots are starting to grow and it’s beginning to photosynthesize a lot more, it needs between 10 to 15 moles per meter square per day. Then when you’re starting to harden it off and tone it, you can back off on the light a little bit more and give it about 10 moles per meter square per day.

GM: Are there different kinds of lights that are most effective in propagation?

SB: If you’re using LEDs, they would be a lot cooler and you would have a lot more control over your temperature because you could just manage it with temperature controls in your greenhouse. But if you’re using HPS lights, then they would provide a lot more heat and you would have to keep that in mind as you’re growing. You’re controlling your temperature, too, because they provide heat as well. LEDs are actually a great thing to consider using in the propagation environment because [cuttings are] such [a] high-value [input] and it really justifies [purchasing] the expensive LEDs.

I think you can have success with HPS or LEDs. I think the big difference would be the temperature. If growers still have older HPS lights, they can definitely use them. They just need to keep in mind the temperature. And then with LEDs, they kind of need to keep in mind the wavelengths they might want to attain.

Dr. Roberto Lopez [from Michigan State University] gave a talk [at Cultivate’18] about substrate temperature and the propagation environment. I think that we are just starting to realize that substrate temperature impacts rooting. but there hasn’t been a lot of research yet about how to manage that and what the right range is for greenhouses.

A case of the blues

2018 Greenhouse Lighting Guide - Production Pointers

Blue light is radiation between 400 and 500 nanometers (nm). Before the introduction of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), greenhouse growers would look to metal halide (MH) lamps as a supplemental light source to provide additional blue light to their crops. With the improvements in LEDs for horticultural lighting, comes the ability to produce narrow-spectrum light in a variety of wavelengths. Blue light, usually somewhere between ~430 and 450 nm, is now commonly included or available for many LED lights (Fig. 1). One of the primary reasons blue light was originally included along with red light in LED arrays was because they are the two wavelengths the chlorophyll absorb most. However, there are other benefits to using blue light in crop production aside from promoting photosynthesis.

First, one of the main interests in including or adding blue light to crops grown in a greenhouse or indoors is to control growth. The effect of red light and far-red light on plant growth is fairly well-known: When the amount of red light relative to far-red light is low, stem elongation is promoted. Alternatively, when the amount of red light relative to far-red light is high, elongation is suppressed. Blue light also has a similar growth-suppressing effect on plants, as it can suppress cell elongation and stem and leaf expansion. As the amount of blue light increases, the degree of growth inhibition increases. Usually, anywhere from five to 30 percent blue light provides adequate growth control without excessive stunting.

For ornamental and edible crops with purple foliage, color development can be less than ideal during the late fall, winter and early spring under low-light conditions. The purple coloration, anthocyanin, is typically formed in response to high-light intensities; the pigment helps reduce the amount of light energy so plants are not stressed. However, if you are interested in improving the foliage color of red lettuce, purple fountain grass or other red/purple-pigmented foliage, blue light can be used during low-light times of the year to stimulate color development in foliage. Additionally, blue light does not have to be used throughout production; providing blue light for around one or two weeks is sufficient to produce the desired color.

Fig. 1. Blue light, provided by light-emitting diodes in this image, can affect several aspects of crop growth and development, from stem and leaf elongation, foliage pigmentation, and phytochemical and nutrient composition of crops.

Photo: Christopher J. Currey

Blue light can also alter the chemical composition of plants, which in turn can add value to crops. For example, blue light can increase the abundance of phytochemicals in culinary herbs, potentially improving flavor and aroma. Additionally, blue light can promote accumulation of antioxidants in other leafy greens, which in turn enhances their nutritional value.

Blue light is a high-energy wavelength, and there are some practical implications this has, most notably energy consumption. The high energy of blue light means more power is required to produce blue light. For example, when three physically identical LED arrays varying only in the proportion of red and blue light provided were mounted the same distance from a greenhouse bench and provided 70 µmol·m–2·d–1 at plant height, the amount of energy used to run the lights increased from 1.80 to 2.57 kilowatt hours per day as the proportion of blue changed from 0 percent (100 percent red) to 30 percent (70 percent red). Try to only provide as much blue light as you need to in order to achieve your goals, since providing more blue light than you need can needlessly increase your energy bill.

In addition to energy consumption, you’ll want to consider employee safety and comfort when using blue light. High proportions of blue light can be uncomfortable to work around for extended periods of time, with some getting uncomfortable or feeling nauseous after a while. Aside from trying to minimize the time working around blue light, you can use special glasses that reduce the strain on eyes resulting from too much blue light.

With the recent advances in lighting technology, providing blue light to manipulate plant growth, development and value to improve horticulture crops grown in greenhouses and controlled environments is easier than ever before. This is one case of the blues that is not sad!

Christopher is an assistant professor of horticulture in the Department of Horticulture at Iowa State University. ccurrey@iastate.edu

A look inside plants

Departments - The Growing Edge

A corn root crown, excavated from the soil, rinsed and scanned with X-ray tomography. This and similar X-ray data from the Danforth Center can measure dozens of root traits with high accuracy and fidelity.

Photo courtesy of Keith E. Duncan

When one thinks of X-rays and positron-emission tomography (PET) scans, their mind usually goes to broken bones and early cancer detection. Dr. Yuan-Chuan Tai, associate professor of radiology at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), Missouri, estimates that more than 90 percent of PET scans are used for clinical oncological imaging. As a medical physicist and imaging scientist, his main focus with the technology is in clinical applications.

But building off several decades of research, Tai and scientists at the nearby Donald Danforth Plant Science Center in St. Louis are using PET scans and X-rays for another purpose: to study how plants behave.

Tracing plant mechanisms with PET scans

Tai has worked with PET scans for 26 years, but not always to advance the field of plant science. About 10 years ago, he says, the Department of Energy called for proposals from researchers who could use imaging technology to study how crops can produce energy. He applied for and received funding for plant-related imaging research. This was one opportunity that got him to do more work in that space, where he does a portion of his work still.

The Department of Energy has a wide interest in scientific research concerning “biology, environment, climate change [and] energy-producing technology,” including how plant mechanisms occur, Tai says. Much of this work has been made possible by plant imaging. For example: The Department of Energy was interested in how plants store carbon underground, and if there is a plant that can store massive amounts of carbon in its root system. All plants do this, Tai says, adding, “The goal is to understand the below-ground activity better to further improve the efficiency.”

With one of the largest PET research programs in the world, WUSTL uses four cyclotrons, or particle accelerators, to produce radioactive tracers, Tai says. These tracers allow PET to track their movement through plants, and scientists can look at processes such as carbon or nitrogen utilization, whether occurring under normal conditions or environmental changes. “If [scientists] need a new tracer to study a particular receptor, then we will work with chemists,” he says. “If they don't need a new receptor to study new a target — they just want to see where carbon goes — we don't need a chemist to be involved.”

PET data being acquired from a plant at Washington University in St. Louis

Photo courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis

WUSTL also received funding from the National Science Foundation to develop scanners to image plants. “Most scanners had this horizontal bore where the patient lies down in the bed [to] slide in and out of the scanner,” Tai says. “Most plants grow vertically, so we built a device, and we put it inside a plant growth chamber. It has a vertical bore, so you can just drop a potted plant inside, and you can scan it from top to bottom, and we can control the environment, so we can study the plant.”

NSF funding also allowed Tai’s group to join the Plant Imaging Consortium (PIC) in 2014, which was formed by plant biologists and imaging specialists in Missouri and Arkansas. Tai was a co-principal investigator on the project until it ended in July. Work done through the PIC included PET scanning of tomato plants to study carbon movement through graft junctions, as well as how roots interact with fungus and bacteria in the soil.

Additionally, WUSTL works with the Danforth Center to study interactions between plants and fungi, Tai says. “There are certain strands of fungus that can help to convert phosphor in the soil into a form that plants can consume,” he says. “Fungi pick up the phosphor and convert it, then use it to exchange for the carbon with the plant. Plants get phosphor from fungus; fungus get carbon from plants. How they communicate and interact is an interesting scientific area.”

Mapping root structures using X-ray imaging

This specialized research is in full gear at Dr. Christopher Topp’s lab at the Danforth Center, says Keith E. Duncan, research scientist in the Topp Lab. “Chris’ lab has done nothing but study root systems since it's been around — could be alfalfa, could be sorghum, could be corn, could be soybean,” he says. “Any kind of root system — we're interested in how can we measure it, how can we evaluate it, without having to pull it up out of the soil."

The Danforth Center uses an X-ray tomography instrument that is encased in a lead box, weighing eight tons and measuring about nine square feet, Duncan says. Using nondestructive imaging and leaving the plant inside intact, the machine maps root structures — every aspect including thickness, deepness, number and complexity.

“They sell dozens of them to automotive plants and for electronics and aerospace to do nondestructive testing and imaging of very large or very dense, very complicated things,” Duncan says. “For us, we can take entire root systems that are growing — an entire corn plant or a soybean plant growing in a one or two or three-gallon pot — put the pot in there and scan the entire root system.”

A greenhouse-grown maize plant used in an experiment at Washington University in St. Louis

Photo courtesy of Washington University in St. Louis

Various scanning technologies offer several levels of resolution and provide different information when imaging plant root systems, Duncan says. PET scan technology can, in millimeter-resolution, take a full image of a corn or soybean root system in a one-gallon pot, although it needs to be separated into two separate top and bottom scans to cover the entire volume of the pot. Meanwhile, an X-ray tomography machine can image an entire root system in a single three-hour scan, while providing resolution in micrometers. It also shows scientists where plant roots are — something PET technology doesn’t do.

But the answer to many biological questions can’t be answered through the use of a single technology. “Working with Tai, and then working with computer scientists, we'll take that PET scan, overlay that with the X-ray scan, which shows you where all the roots are, and now, it's like having one map overlaid with another map,” Duncan says. “You have the map of the outline of the states, and then you overlay a transparency that has all the rivers.”

The Danforth Center also performs imaging with an X-ray microscope, which was the first device of its type to solely perform plant science in a plant science institute, Duncan says. It scans roots in soil, but at a much higher magnification than the larger X-ray tomography system, he says. In early August, Duncan used the X-ray microscope to identify and examine fungi inside root tissue — marking the first time anyone has ever done this using X-ray imaging.

This single 2D slice was taken from a full 3D scan of a soybean bud complex with multiple florets, providing a high resolution normally only possible with electron microscopy. The Danforth Center’s computer scientists can evaluate and measure numerous aspects of plant biology in 3D from an image like this.

Photo courtesy of Keith E. Duncan

Greenhouse applications

The Danforth Center paid for the X-ray microscope with financial help from Sumimoto Chemical and its wholly owned subsidiary Valent, the latter of which rents greenhouse space at the Danforth Center and works with it on research. In late July, Topp and Duncan brought virtual reality headsets to the grand opening of Valent BioSciences’ Biorational Research Center in Libertyville, Illinois, allowing attendees to virtually “stand inside” the root system of a plant. Tai also attended the event.

The Danforth Center performs blind experiments with growing media that includes products from Valent and its own wholly owned subsidiary, Mycorrhizal Applications, Duncan says. “We're [currently] working out the conditions whereby we can reliably image the root system and then overlay the PET information,” he says. “Once we have that down and can measure these things consistently, then we'll start comparing roots with and without the microbes, roots with and without the additives, roots with the additive plus and minus a drought condition or nitrogen starvation.”

Overlaying X-ray and PET scans is one process that makes data management and analysis so integral to the Topp Lab’s work, Duncan says. The lab employs as many computer scientists and mathematicians as it does biologists, with the former two groups working on projects like the virtual reality visualizations.

Duncan says he expects that Danforth Center research that looks at beneficial bacteria and fungi, and how they feed nutrients to plant roots, will have an impact on the ornamental industry. Although corn is a much different crop from ornamentals, the genetic controls for their root systems will often be similar. As the industry better understands root system architecture, it will be able to introduce useful soil additives.

Greenhouse growers, unlike field growers, have the ability to control their environment, Tai says. They could benefit from plant imaging research to add to that control. “If they have a better understanding of certain mechanisms underlying the growing cycle of plants, or to understand which species should be under certain kinds of growth conditions, then they can potentially fine-tune their greenhouse environment to maximize their yield,” he says. “I can imagine [this would help] them to have a better understanding of the greenhouse environment and how the conditions affect the productivity. That would actually have some commercial value.”